Tickets for the Denver Art Museum’s “Becoming van Gogh” are in high-demand as the blockbuster exhibit enters its final hours this weekend.

The unlucky few who did not purchase tickets before the show sold-out January 7 are begging friends, calling in favors and turning to the Internet for help.

On Craigslist, there’s a small but eager bit of asking going on, with people offering up to $100 for tickets that originally sold for $25 each. There doesn’t appear to be much of a supply though. Most of the folks I contacted said they got few or no responses. Nobody reported any serious gouging.

Frederic C. Hamilton, the long-time chair of the Denver Art Museum Board of Trustees is officially stepping down. Taking over the board is another familiar face in the local philanthropic community, J. Landis Martin.

The two have co-chaired the board for the last 18 months, as leadership transitioned from Hamilton, who served for nearly three decades, to Martin.

Leading DAM’s board is a plum position for local movers and shakers and often goes to large donors. Hamilton contributed significant sums to the museum over the years. His $20 million gift for DAM’s massive 146,000-square-foot addition in 2006, was enough to have the $110 million building named after him.

Among the painters to be featured: Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne.

The suite of exhibits included in DAM’s “French Fall” include:

1. “Court to Café: Three Centuries of French Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum.” The Hartford, Conn. museum’s traveling show features 50 works from the 17th through 20th centuries and is packed with superstar names, such as Nicolas Poussin, François Boucher, Degas, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Monet.

If you don’t get tickets to the blockbuster “Becoming van Gogh” at the Denver Art Museum, you’ll have only yourself to blame.

Demand is high and museum is accommodating it — staying open overnight during the closing weekend. The exhibit will be open from 8 a.m. Saturday, January 19 all the way through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, January 20.

Then it’s gone for good.

The exhibit — which features 70 works by Vincent van Gogh borrowed from dozens of museums around the world– has proven popular since it debuted in September. Several times, the museum has expanded hours, allowing visitors in until 9 p.m. most evenings and opening on Mondays for members. Currently it’s sold-out through January 15.

The special late-night hours are on sale now. The only catch is that visitors will only be allowed into the van Gogh exhibit. The rest of the museum, usually included in the admission price, will be closed.

There’s info at a special website: VanGoghDenver.com. You can also call 720-913-0130. Regular adult tickets are $25.

1. The audio tour is available in Spanish, a first for a major exhibit at DAM. The audio isn’t crucial, but it’s a great, $3 assist if you want to understand what curators Timothy Standring and Louis van Tilborgh are trying to say about van Gogh. Visitors control the stop and go on the sound, so you can spin it at your own pace.

2. The catalogue is the real deal. DAM spent a long time on the book, published through Yale University Press, and it’s a terrific read. The essays, particularly by Standring and van Tilborgh, are brief, compelling and easy-to-digest. The timeline puts everything in perspective and the colorful plates let you take a little van Gogh home with you.

The Still was designed by architect Brad Cloepfil. The collection is owned by the city, but private funds paid for the building.

Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum will drop admission charges Saturday, the first of six free days it will begin offering to the public over the next 12 months.

The museum, which houses the city-owned collection of abstract expressionist painter Clyfford Still, opened in November. Regular admission is $10 for adults.

The no-charge days come in response to a large increase in public funding that the museum will get through the Scientific & Cultural Facilities District, a financing arm for cultural non-profits throughout the region. The Still moved from a Tier III organization under SCFD’s funding structure to a Tier II organization last week, which basically means its share of the public pot will grow significantly.

The Lakewood-based foundation pledged the money for the museum’s Collections Conservation Center through a series of grants that will also fund long-term collections conservation.

The money is vital, since the Conservation Center will provide a climate-controlled gathering place for the Museum’s 1.4 million specimens and artifacts. It’s part of the larger Rocky Mountain Science Collections Center — itself a part of the Education and Collections Facility, a 126,000-square-foot addition to the museum that broke ground last September and is currently under construction on the east end of City Park.

The smashing Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at the Denver Art Museum took local photograper Robert Clayton back to the day when Saint Laurent was tearing up the design world and Clayton was tapped to take his picture.

Clayton’s pics, which he shared with DAM and us, are strikingly intimate. They offer a glimpse of how Saint Laurent approached his work (seriously, and well-dressed) and provide some authentic context for the times (It was a mod, mod world, indeed).

The pieces are made with everything from a simple fabric to shaggy fake fur. They might be sequined, or embroidered or dyed neon pink. They stand alone as sculptures (of a sort) or Cave puts them on during his live movement performances.

He’ll have a major exhibit of his work at DAM next June, which the museum is describing as “a multi-sensory, immersive installation that will transport visitors to a magical world of color, texture, sound and movement.”

As a windup to that, he delivers the next in DAM’s Logan Lecture series. It starts at 7 p.m. We’re expecting a mix of chat and video and a little insight into what Cave is really thinking.